Oakland Heights Expressway
Oakland Heights Expressway (Traditional Chinese: 奧克蘭嶺高速公路) is a controlled-access freeway in Torbury City in the Free State of Torbury. The freeway runs from Huntington Road to Torbury International Airport. East of Huntington Road, the freeway becomes a predominantly suburban thoroughfare, finally ending at Boundary Ridges Avenue. The entire length of the freeway is four lanes wide. It is notable that there is a railway crossing at the beginning of the freeway, where rail-vehicle collisions are very prominent. Petitions have been raised by local residents to elevate the rail or the road to prevent future accidents. History On June 22, 1983, Torbury International Airport was opened to the public. The airport was only connected to the city via monorail, the Airport Bullet Line. It was in great hopes that the airport to be connected by roads, as discussed in the 1970s when the airport was planned to be built. In the end, Schlen Ascent and Oakland Heights Avenue was extended as a two-lane rural lane into the airport, and a connector road, Cheong Wan Road, was built to connect the traffic. Over the years, traffic loads are beyond capacity for these rural roads, and an imminent need of an arterial road connection became apparent. In the 1990s, an initial highway was designed as a mixed option between widening Schlen Ascent and Oakland Heights Avenue, and the highway would eventually connect to Horizonal Axis Road in Downtown Torbury. However, this was deemed impossible due to land issues (Kei Leng Ha villagers refuse to allow the road widening, as well as some landowners near Downtown Torbury). In 1997, the City of Torbury decided to widen then-Oakland Heights Avenue, to Preston Gateways. The widened length would become the new expressway. The road widening was completed on January 7, 2001, and was subsequently opened on April 2, 2001 to traffic. When it was built, there were controversies about the highway's traversal through the ecological sensitive area/woodland of Oakland Heights. The usage of the expressway remained low ever since, due to public transit regulations in the Free State. On August 7, 2008, an engineering fault has caused parts of the expressway near Schlen Ascent to encave into the ground, though fortunately it did not affect any vehicles or cause any casualties. The road was immediately closed to the public for its entire length for a repaving and a safety re-assessment. Safety guard rails were installed during this closure as well. After 9 months of closure, the expressway re-opened to the public on April 28, 2009. On January 1, 2013, in accordance to the subway extension of the Orange Line, SPRINT Autumn was phased out along the subway corridor. The bus rapid transit line was then re-assigned to use the expressway, to connect Oakland Heights SPRINT Station and Torbury International Airport. SPRINT Autumn has became one of the most frequent users of the expressway. Lane configuration Exits * Preston Gateways (East End) * Cheong Hong Road / Torbury International Airport (West End) ''There are no exits in the middle of the expressway. Category:Roads in Torbury